471–480 of 794 posts
"It might be that many software business models don't work when engineers cost $400k/year."
You just cannot run a "normal" business model.
If you want cheap employees, hire Egyptians.
The US technical market is inflated because so many companies are earning $$$.
Even if you fix your "process" problems, things won't get better. You need to offer a better quid pro quo.
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> The thing with 4hr technical assignments is that you're saying no to anyone with kids, which I'm going to venture applies to more senior people than juniors. Completely agree here - like a fool I recently went through an entire day's worth interviews for a role (hello Stripe recruiters!!) that required both me and my wife taking PTO, with her looking after the kids while I talked to one junior dev after another abo…
As something of a counterpoint, a literal 4-hour assignment isn't that bad--especially as an alternative to a day of interviews. If they give you the assignment and it's immediately obvious that it's actually a 20+ hour assignment, you can always just walk. When I worked for a technology analyst company, we would ask for writing samples--which most potential hires would already have. But, if someone didn't, they'd ha…
A take home assignment only shows me that they like unpaid work.
Moving fast and being responsive is really important, i.e. be lucky. I only just this week moved from part time consulting to a full time job. I think I was very lucky, but from the first moment of contacting recruiters/applying/reaching out it took only 1.5 weeks to get an offer that exceeded my expectations. It is hard to be lucky enough to capture the attention of the right application at the right time.
Include the salary in the job ad. I only applied for jobs with salary in the ad. It saves everyone so much time to know that everyone is in the same ballpark before starting any discussions.
Look beyond the resume. The trouble is over 20 years, I've done A LOT. So many different technologies, problems, industries, roles. It's too much to condense into a resume that perfectly fits your expectations. Come up with some probing questions that are relevant to what you need from a problem solving point of view, and ask those. I remember interviewing and it prompted a whole set of memories I had omitted from my resume and cover letters, all because I just plain forgot.
Be proactive. For example, I added a post to a monthly "whos looking for work" post on HN. I didn't hear from you and I would have loved to. Maybe I wasn't the perfect fit, but no way to know unless we talked. I wonder how many other potentials could have been missed?
I wouldn't worry about whether or not the take home technical assignment is causing issues or not. You will need some way of evaluation candidates in a practical way, and it might be video discussions, or it might be take home assessments, or something else. All a quite time consuming, and will exclude people who don't have that time. If people are genuinely looking and are interesting in your team, they will find a way to make the time. Perhaps be flexible in this point and work with the candidate to decide what method of evaluation works for both parties.
I don't pretend that the above will fix any hiring issues, but I think it's worth considering. In a job market where there is an overwhelming demand for senior people, ask yourself - why should they work for you?
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Anecdotally, as someone with three kids I'd much rather do a take-home 4 hour assignment than the usual round of interviews since I can work the former into my schedule however I like.
Agreed. Take-homes we’re greatly preferred by our candidates with families because they could be done on a weekend or in their spare time. I’m also a parent of small kids with a busy schedule. Despite the packed schedule and demands of raising kids, it would be a huge exaggeration to suggest that I couldn’t find 4 hours of time to do a take-home if given a week of time (as is common). The parent commenter might have…
Its not a one 4 hour take home project. Its the fifth one.
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Liquidation preferences advantage you compared to common stockholders in any situation that isn't an IPO. In a slightly disappointing acquisition (the most common outcome for a "successful" startup), it saves your butt. If you have double-dipping shares or a higher liquidation preference, you are going to make a lot of money in a bad acquisition situation. Liquidation preferences are cheap insurance against bad outco…
There is not a single respectable startup in existence that will give a random employee options or stock with liquidation preferences. For 99.9% of startups that would involve making a new class of shares for you, which ain’t gonna happen. Investor is of course completely different for many reasons and I’m not speaking to that. And anyways unless you are leading the round, which you aren’t, you are just getting whate…
Also, it generally doesn't need a new class of shares, just a vote by the board.
Edit: Just to clarify, if you want to hire a mercenary, you can't do it expecting that they will take the same value of your stock that your true believer investors took without any of the guarantees that your investors got. They are investing time into your company and you need to make it worth it.
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The thing with 4hr technical assignments is that you're saying no to anyone with kids, which I'm going to venture applies to more senior people than juniors. I used to do these assignment. Now I simply don't sorry. My schedule is 6:30 AM wake up with youngest daughter, to let wife sleep in (she takes care of her all night) 9:00 AM hand off youngest daughter to wife, who takes both girls the rest of the day. I go to m…
Anecdotally, as someone with three kids I'd much rather do a take-home 4 hour assignment than the usual round of interviews since I can work the former into my schedule however I like.
Read https://www.honeycomb.io/blog/observations-on-the-enterprise...
If you're having this problem, your first step is to get the recruiter out of the process. Start screening all resumes yourself. I've had some bad experiences with recruiters, both in-house and otherwise, and I feel they usually get screenings wrong. But there's an even more important reason for you to take over this process now: you don't know where your dropoff is. You need to get familiar with what's going on. Are…
> You said "benefits and salary are good", but literally the only reason to not list these things in a posting is if they're not actually that good. The other reason I have seen a reluctance to put salary in a job posting is that some companies may not want their current employees to know how much the new hires are getting.
It is a tough problem to crack from the businesses point of view. They need to have enough capital and profit to ensure that current staff are compensated at a competitive industry rate, but also hire at the same time to get the business goals met to get that revenue, and so on and so on.
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Seems like a good way to weed out people that are constantly taking time off to deal with kid issues.
Yes, then they can focus on hiring those who*: 1. want to work from home to take their new bearded dragon to the vet. 2. have their moms contact me about work load. 3. pre-emptively book a sick day for Monday because they "plan to get really messed up this weekend". People with kids are the worst employees! * These have all happened to me in the past year.